Eddie Murray
The fact that Eddie Murray, the old placekicker, has a Super Bowl ring and his former Lions teammates do not is both ironic and stinging. For if one of Murray's Lions kicks had been positioned 18 inches to the left, names like Gary Danielson and Doug English and Billy Sims might have replaced those of Joe Montana, Roger Craig and Dwight Clark, at least for one year, in the minds of pro football fans everywhere.
It's playoff time again in the NFL, which means it isn't here in Detroit. Wayne Fontes is gone, after all, and gone with him are those frequent postseason visits, though they mostly ended after one game. To this day Fontes is the only Lions coach in the past 48 years to navigate his team through 60 minutes of playoff football and, at the end, have scored more points than the opposition. It was January 5, 1992 -- a 38-6 win over the Dallas Cowboys. America's Team got drilled, but then went on to win three of the next four Super Bowls. Being the Lions' only playoff victim since 1957 must have made them cranky.
But eight years earlier -- December 31, 1983 -- the Lions, our Lions, were oh-so-close to appearing in the NFC Championship. One game removed from the Super Bowl. But Eddie Murray's right leg went crooked at the most inopportune of times.I think about that game from time-to-time, always around this time of year it seems, because even though the San Francisco 49'ers, winners of that New Year's Eve '83 playoff tilt, had already won one Super Bowl by then, they were nowhere near being the dynasty they became by the end of the decade. Had the Lions beaten them in Frisco that day, who knows? Maybe they, and not the 49'ers, would have gone on to bigger and better things in the 1980's.
The Lions of '83 were a team full of hope when the season began, that ancient mantra when it comes to pro football in Detroit. But this time there appeared to be genuine reason for high expectations. The '82 club had made the playoffs, a first for the Lions since 1970. And even though 1982 was a strike-shortened NFL season, and the Lions had qualified for the playoffs with an unsightly 4-5 record, the team was still considered up-and-coming. There were pieces in place. Danielson at quarterback. Sims carrying the ball. English anchoring a fierce, pass-rushing defensive line. Keith Dorney at tackle, the heart and soul of an offensive line that was in the league's upper echelon.
Yet the team started 1-4, and after that fourth loss, on the road against the Rams in southern California, head coach Monte Clark stood in front of the doomsaying reporters and said with gallows humor, "See you at the cemetery." The coach didn't expect to last more than another day or two. But then the Lions caught fire, and finished the season on an 8-3 run, to borrow basketball vernacular. Their 9-7 record, while not stupendous, was enough to win the NFC Central division. Their prize? A flight to the Bay Area to face the 10-6 49'ers. Typical of the Lions to have to play a postseason game on the road, even as divisional champions.
The 49'ers, winners of Super Bowl XVI in Detroit two seasons earlier, fell flat in 1982, perhaps a victim of post-championship hangover. They were 3-6, one game worse than the Lions. No playoffs for them. But they rebounded in '83, and got the home game thanks to being one game better than the Lions. And so it was that the two teams, who were both 2-14 in 1979, would do battle in Candlestick Park, New Year's party hats and bottles of champagne awaiting the winner.
*********************************************
...in Murray's own words, he failed to "kick the stuffing" out of the ball.
*********************************************
Danielson was, in a word, awful that day. He threw five interceptions. Sims, on the other hand, was brilliant, rushing for 114 yards on 20 carries, including two touchdowns in the fourth quarter that turned a 17-9 deficit into a 23-17 lead with under seven minutes to play. But the Lions, even with their decent defense, couldn't hold the advantage. Montana threw a 14-yard strike to Freddie Solomon to put the 49'ers ahead 24-23. There were only a few minutes left, but the Lions would only need a field goal for victory. It would be the lack of one that would haunt them for years.
Danielson, despite his rotten performance up to that point, used steely determination and his right arm to march the Lions downfield. "All I knew was, I was going to get us into field goal range one way or another," Danielson said after the game. And that he did. With seconds remaining, the Lions made it to the San Francisco 26 yard line.Their playoff fate would rest on the leg of Eddie Murray.
Murray, in his fourth season as Lions kicker, was perhaps at the time not in the league long enough to have garnered a reputation for making clutch kicks. But at the same time, Eddie Murray hadn't been known as a choke artist, either. He was, frankly, somewhere in between. And now he trotted onto the field at Candlestick, 43 yards away from lifting his team to the conference championship game.The field was muddy and torn up after 59+ minutes of football. Because of the conditions, Murray began thinking too much. "What I should have done was what I usually do," Murray said afterward. "And that is, just kick the stuffing out of the ball."
Murray babied the crucial kick
Lining up on the right hashmark, Danielson knelt to spot the ball as the holder. Murray went through his usual routine -- right foot tamping down the area where the ball would be placed, taking the requisite number of steps back, and then to his left. Left hand resting on left leg just above the knee. Head down, awaiting the snap and hold. Just like every other kick. But, in Murray's own words, he failed to "kick the stuffing" out of the ball. He babied the kick, and it pushed to the right. For a moment it looked as if the ball might draw left, between the uprights. But it stayed frustratingly right, and the 49'ers crowd going insane with delight in the end zone told Detroit TV viewers all they needed to know. The kick was wide right, and the Lions had lost.
I didn't need to see the actual kick, however, to know the Lions' goose was cooked. What sealed it for me was the now infamous camera shot of coach Clark on the sidelines, hands clasped together in prayer, face looking skyward. As soon as I saw that image, I said a four-letter word that is another way of intimating you have to use the little boys' room -- sitting down. I guess the Lions' history of ineptitude ingrained in me the Pavlovian reaction of assuming the worst when someone from the Lions hopes -- or prays -- for the best.
Eddie Murray got his Super Bowl win a decade later, as a member of the Cowboys. He kicked three field goals in Dallas' 30-13 victory over Buffalo. None of them, of course, was of the clutch variety. But guaranteed, Lions fans watching that Super Bowl flashed back, every time Murray entered the game, to what might have been on December 31, 1983 -- if only Eddie had kicked the stuffing out of the ball.
No comments:
Post a Comment